Lakehurst Naval Air Station
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Lakehurst_Naval_Air_Station".

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Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst
Maxfield Field

IATA: NEL – ICAO: KNEL – FAA: NEL
Summary
Airport type Military
Operator United States Navy
Location Lakehurst, New Jersey
Elevation AMSL 103 ft / 31 m
Coordinates 40°02′00″N 074°21′13″W / 40.033333, -74.35361Coordinates: 40°02′00″N 074°21′13″W / 40.033333, -74.35361
Runways
Direction Length Surface
ft m
6/24 5,000 1,524 Asphalt
15/33 5,001 1,524 Asphalt
Marker Showing Disaster Landing Point
Marker Showing Disaster Landing Point
Airport diagram
Airport diagram
Aerial view of NAS Lakehurst in the 1940s with the airship hangars
Aerial view of NAS Lakehurst in the 1940s with the airship hangars
Aerial view of NAS Lakehurst in the early 1970s with an index of its facilities
Aerial view of NAS Lakehurst in the early 1970s with an index of its facilities

Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst or NAES Lakehurst (IATA: NEL, ICAO: KNEL, FAA LID: NEL), also known as Maxfield Field, is a military airport located three miles (5 km) west of the central business district (CBD) of Lakehurst, in Ocean County, New Jersey, USA. It was formerly the Lakehurst Naval Air Station, and later the Naval Air Engineering Center Lakehurst. Despite the name, it is actually located in nearby Manchester Township.

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History

It is most famous as the site of the Hindenburg Disaster on May 6, 1937. Despite the notoriety and well documented nature of this incident, today there is simply a small white metal flag along with a plaque that denotes the location of the crash in the field behind the large hangars on base.

Prior to this event, the base was also the center of airship development in the United States and housed three of the Navy's four rigid airships, (ZR-1) Shenandoah, (ZR-3) Los Angeles, and (ZRS-4) Akron. A number of the airship hangars built to berth these ships still survive. Hangar One, in which the Shenandoah was built, held the record for the largest "single room" in the world. According to an article in the January, 1925 issue of National Geographic Magazine, the airship hangar "could house three Woolworth Buildings lying side by side."

The base also housed many Navy blimps before, during, and after WWII.

Today, the base is still used for airship development as well as for other Navy programs.

Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst is part of the Navy Lakehurst / Fort Dix / McGuire AFB Complex.

Chronology

  • 1917-1921 Acquired by U.S. Army as an ammunition proving ground. Named Camp Kendrick.
  • 1921 Commissioned as a Naval Air Station (NAS) Lakehurst. Captain Frank Taylor Evans is the first Commanding Officer.
  • 1921-1961 The country's (and, perhaps, the world's) Lighter Than Air (LTA) Center. In 1961, the Navy's LTA program was terminated.
  • 1937 Hindenburg catches fire while approaching for a landing.
  • 1958 The Naval Air Test Facility (NATF) was established.
  • 1973 The Naval Air Engineering Center (NAEC) was relocated from Philadelphia as directed by a Shore Establishment Realignment.
  • 1977 NAS and NATF were disestablished and merged into NAEC.
  • 1992 The Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC) was established. NAEC becomes the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division Lakehurst (NAWCADLKE).
  • 1994 NAWCADLKE becomes the Naval Air Engineering Station (NAES) for shore station management and the Aircraft Platform Interface (API) Group for technical mission support.
  • 1994 NAWCADLKE and the rest of the AIRCRAFT DIVISION reorganize into a Competency Aligned Organization.
  • 1997 The Aircraft Division and Weapons Division are integrated into the Naval Aviation Systems Team's Competency Aligned Organization.
  • In February 2004, installation commanders from Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst, the Army's Fort Dix, and McGuire Air Force Base formed a partnership to generate joint solutions for common problems between the three contiguous bases and their tenant commands.

In 2005, the United States Department of Defense announced that Naval Air Engineering Station Lakehurst would be affected by a Base Realignment and Closure. It will be merged with two neighboring military bases, McGuire Air Force Base and Fort Dix, establishing Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst, N.J. This will be the first base of its kind in the United States.

References

External links
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